Imagination Killer or Creativity Secret? Constructively Working With Emotion and Emotional Memory

[W]hen I do see true creativity, I'm stopped still in my tracks....

Unfortunately, (like many others) my imagination is mostly stretched these days by incredible weather and earth forces that jolt the world. And by the horrors I see carried out in war-torn and hunger-ravaged countries. - Janet Johnson, Marqui blog post, "Firing Up The Imagination"

I comment:

Janet, I too absolutely loved "Finding Neverland" and I am in the same boat with you on being stretched to be imaginative in the midst of this time of tragedy.

However, I think allowing our hearts to stay open - even if it's to the breaking point - will make us more creative in the future as it allows us to remain open, responsive, observant, and alive - vitally important for creativity. I will blog about this later, but I read Voltaire and other creative types of his era were profoundly shaken to their core by the Earthquake of Lisbon in 1775 which claimed 30,000 lives in six minutes; it ultimately carried forth in their work.

In a snippet from a private email, Janet responds:

And I couldn't agree more that keeping our hearts open (as best possible) is key to creativity.  Even (and sometimes especially) when it hurts.

Little did I know when we exchanged those words that things could get any worse. Trying to go back to my regular business schtick isn't quite happening smoothly. It feels false. It is false. If all that is going on in my life ended with the post-tsunami aftermath, that would be more than enough to handle. But it does not. For instance, I found out my ex-husband (and friend) suffered a serious head injury in an accident this past Friday. And it sent me reeling again.

The key to my creativity and imagination is listening to my heart, or my inner voice. But it's hard to listen to your heart when you're crying your eyes out and your heart scrunches over in agony. And thus my imagination, presence and focus is out the window. On the other hand, stark clarity seems to be my companion now regardless of my emotional state - as if they are left standing after the tsunami like the mosques in Aceh even as nothing else is.

Since the tsunami, I've talked with and/or corresponded with many other tsunami survivors, folks smack in the middle of other major tragedies such as 9/11 or huge earthquakes, yet others that beat cancer into remission, people that walked again after a major car accident, those who have treated tortured prisoners of war, someone whose parent went to prison as a child and just on the bus yesterday morning a man who survived a major head injury during a mountain bike crash last August. These major traumas may seem far from our own reality. For others of us, a divorce, a bankrupty, a failed business venture, the loss of a spouse or child, a threatening illness and any other manner of loss can be equally ungrounding. I can't imagine that there is anyone immune from being caught offguard and swept into unsettling times at some point in their life.

Burying and running away from confronting emotions during unsettling times isn't the answer, but neither is wallowing in them. And it's a mighty fine line between engaging with and wallowing in emotions. One that - out of sheer habit - I am prone to cross over. Sheer habit becomes engrained in us as part of our mental maps and throws us into a reactionary mode of living.

I'm beginning to snap out of rigorous map following and am treading uncharted terrain. Re-reading the book "Joy" by Osho interrupted me out of an old pattern of thought. Especially when I read his counter-intuitive response to the question: "Why do I feel so much pain in letting go of the things that are causing me so much misery?" His response and the wisdom of the book jolted me out of the grooves of my mental gutter.

For weeks I have seen clearly (taking action is the harder part) that a large part of the ongoing hurt is reliving and re-feeling loss and devastation over and over again. Reliving the memory of trauma is a symptom of post-traumatic stress syndrome (although it's quite typical initially), I find out. Another extreme is living in the future and anxiously imagining horrendous outcomes. 

A brave man dies but once, a coward many times. - Native American proverb

Both living in the past or living in the future shuts down creative flow, which only resides in the timeless present.

To see the world in a grain of sand,

and to see heaven in a wild flower,

hold infinity in the palm of your hands,

and eternity in an hour. - William Blake

While doing separate research the other evening, I stumbled onto this neurological research on the resonance of emotional memory and the brain (of applicability to marketers too although I'm not directly tackling that angle now):

If the emotional memory of a traumatic car accident or the thrill of first love are remembered with a special resonance, it is because they engage different brain structures than do normal memories, Duke University researchers have discovered...

While such studies are basic in nature, said [Roberto] Cabeza, better delineation of the role of the amygdala in emotional memory could aid understanding of post traumatic stress disorder -- especially such phenomena as flashbacks of traumatic memories. Said [Florin] Dolcos, "Also, people who suffer depression ruminate obsessively on negative or unpleasant memories. This problem could reflect a pathology in how their memory systems have processed emotional memories."

I've noted a preponderance of vicarious trauma related to the gripping images and stories of the tsunami disaster (and yes, vicarious trauma is very much a true phenemenon as it can trigger old emotional memories):

The disaster in Asia has really affected me in a big way. I did not feel like planning / looking forward to anything for 2005, this blog however is starting to let me re-think my "position", thanks. - comment by Johannes de Jong (via HeadRush's excellent "You 2.0" post on personal reinvention and neuroplasticity)

Immediately after I realized I was injured in the tsunami, I used mind training practices to avoid shock and additional stress. However, it was another story when I saw the wall of water rising out of the Andaman Sea on December 26th - my mind flashbacked to every terrifying whitewater rapids swim (I used to whitewater raft and kayak) I'd ever had and I panicked. The only other serious injury in my life occured on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. Only about an hour before the tsunami hit and before any warning signs had emerged, I unexpectedly (surprising myself) confess to my boyfriend - as we prepared to snorkel in quite tranquil waters - that I was afraid of water. Old fears knocked me off my feet just as much as the tidal torrent barreling down the beach.

How much do we retrace and navigate the same familiar grooves in our brain reliving past emotions - good and bad - over and over again? How much do we miss of the life that's actually spread before us?

How does one look at a bird, or a flower - is the brain scanning its memory store to find out what label or what remembered image fits? If so, one does not discern the immediacy of what's there - the bird or the flower or the person one meets. So are we relating mostly because that's what we're always done, according to memory? - Weavers of Wisdom: Women Mystics of the Twentieth Century by Anne Bancroft

The Fast Company article, The Six Myths of Creativity, refers to Harvard Business School research which states:

[W]e found that creativity is positively associated with joy and love and negatively associated with anger, fear, and anxiety.

If that seems to counter what I've said then re-read this post. Joy exists only in the present and anger, fear and anxiety bounce between the past and the future but are anywhere but the present. However, when I feel these type of emotions, I authentically engage with them. And I am accepting that now is not the time to create - as creating could be an escape tactic - but rather to fully experience and capture. And I gently observe if I am getting stuck in old emotional memory grooves and use witnessing and self-observation techniques to cognitively interrupt patterns in their tracks.

Emotional memory is like a wild horse taking you wherever it wants to go. But once you tame the horse, you can ride the horse, you become attuned to the horse and its pulse and you become its master. Some of my most powerful posts I'd end up crying while writing - sometimes tears of joy - as I intentionally and purposefully evoked emotional memory with safe distance and perspective. Without safe distance - and only you know when you are ready - the creation itself will be distant. (For instance, I can only go so deep in this post as it's still all much too close.)

Much of art and what is deemed creative is emotionally evocative. For creators, there is no holding back. Skimming life at the surface will not protect your heart, and the only creative response - the only life-affirming response - is to plumb its depths. Staying present allows you to perceive and to witness everything as it truly is, rather than automatically bypassing the experience right in front of you and in its place regurgitating from your memory bank.

The most radical thing we can do in this world is be joyful. -- Patch Adams

Related post: Friends of the Wee Voice: Fresh Vision

Comments

[John D. Mitchell]

My condolences and my best wishes for your friend.

In terms of talking about dealing with our emotions, a couple of things came to mind as I read your post...

"We need emotional content." --Bruce Lee, Enter the Dragon

Secondly, you said: "Emotional memory is like a wild horse taking you wherever it wants to go." My impression is that most people seem to consider emotions something that we have very little control over. But, isn't that the fallacy that lies at the heart of so many of our emotionalizational dysfunctions?

[Troy Worman]

Excellent post. I have been very confused over the past 30+ days. The enormous amount of suffering in the world makes my thoughts and my writing about anything else seem a little trite.

But I am doing it anyway. It is hard. I feel distacted. I feel selfish. I feel silly. But I am doing it anyway.

I'm counting my blessings. I am trying to focus on what I need to do. It seems to be working.